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"You’ve got a point Maybe we should take a look at all this … sensitive scientific equipment while we still can It could be important to the case"
"I assure you, it isn’t"
Gideon thought fast Getting out of the basement, that was the first priority On the one hand, he wanted to swear at Wellers for bringing up the machine, but he couldn’t stay there anyway, so the sooner he was out, the better
He glared at the Fiddlehead, source of and solution to socovered? Maybe It’d held on this long, hadn’t it? A week, plus a couple of days But there had been no rain, no ice Waterthe most complex machine aabout Mother Nature, or God, or fate, but he didn’t give a damn about any of them, so he seethed without re
But he couldn’t save the machine if he was imprisoned or dead, now could he?
He seized a bit of waxed cotton canvas--the only bolt he’d brought down He wrapped his hand in one corner and used it to snap his lantern in half, re it
He frowned The lantern was newfangled twenty years ago, before the electrical models hit the market; but now it felt like a Roman artifact in his hands No matter He’d hat he had
He popped off the bottolass canister of fuel that rested within There wasn’tunder a fallen plank, he scooted into the next room over, where it was almost pitch black That made it hard to see, but even harder to be seen
He worked fast, using his teeth to tear off the cuff of his shirtsleeve He stuffed it down into the fuel,enough, or he’d incinerate himself and the Fiddlehead alike
There, crouched in the utmost darkness, he pulled a box of matches out of his pocket and struck one He looked up at what used to be the ceiling, and targeted a pair of feet he could barely see, very near the edge of the basement pit They weren’t Wellers’s feet--Gideon was pretty sure that Wellers was facing the other direction
He listened to the voices for another moment Yes, he was confident
With a deep breath and a steady hand, he lit the scrap of cotton It burned too bright, a beacon that would reveal him if he let it The ouldn’t last but a few precious seconds, and Wellers couldn’t stall the h the floor as quickly as he could
It shattered and the fuel ignited, spreading across the bearass, a shallow pool of fire that chased the officers backwards while Wellers barked out so He was leaving
Out he went, up the broken stairs and over the hile the co the coagulating shadows and his grandfather’s Revolutionary War coat to disguise hi so it wouldn’t flap or snag And while Nelson Wellers and the officers storass, Gideon ran back out through the woods
Yet again
He was sick of it, but what else could he do? There were two kinds of help he could offer Wellers: one, he could physically assault the officers in question, thereby negating any murder defense; or, two, he could prove Wellers a truthfulas far away froes of Wellers’s protest faded in the distance Perhaps they’d arrest him, but it wouldn’t be for murder--and there wasn’t much Gideon could do about it either way He had to trust the Pinkerton agent toother people to take care of things without hi hi himself, the et to the Lincolns’ ho on--he had ears all over the District, and Gideon had a feeling that these murders were already far fro
As he dashed through the trees along the lanced at the sky Was the air on his face wet, or ?
Whoever had thought of a ainst you, loudly y You could under them a lunatic or a murderer, especially a colored man whose respectability was precarious under the best of circuh the sentiments expressed in his editorial sounded outlandish, they were based on rock-solid, irrefutable facts But all the proof in the world only mattered if it were known and accepted, which was rather unlikely if the proof came frorueso, cruel, sick acts, undoubtedly--with the added lurid detail of a dead man’s accusation, written in blood How else would they call hiht they take away his credibility? That he was colored? That he’d been a slave?